Re: [WinMac] OT & OS advice sought

Bruce Johnson(johnson[at]Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU)
Mon, 17 May 1999 07:18:17 +0000

Gary Zak wrote:
>
> I am a math teacher who has maintained a lab of 23 Mac 5260's (OS 7.5.1)
> for three years using Localtalk.

snip

> Upgrading work done so far:
>
> MacLab is wired for 10Bt, each 5260 having a Farallon EtherMac LC Comm I card.
>
> Two 5260's have been upgrade using Apple's website freebie path to 7.5.3,
> then 7.5.5 with a Zip drive, and, using Farallon's drivers off their
> website, both of these 5260's can see the NT server in the Chooser and the
> G3 (on personal file sharing).
>
> Cable Internet into the whole school, Maclab included.
>
> I intend to turn the 6500 into a server running MacJanet 5.0 NOS, and
> re-purpose the Mac Classic. The G3 will be used for Yearbook layout etc.
> ------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------------------
> Questions:
>
> What's the best way to get to 7.5.5 on all machines (the double upgrade off
> a Zip drive is painful) or can you suggest a better choice? Is 7.5.5 as far
> as Apple's freebies go - unfortunately the latest Netscape Navigators
> require minimum 7.6.

Yes, 7.5.5 _is_ the latest free version from Apple. What I did when I upgraded
several machines at a print shop recently was scrounge up an old external HD
drive...it was only 120 mb, but it held the 7.5 installers from Apple. I'm
surprised it takes _two_ zips to hold it...
  
> The upgrade only gave me the older "Network" control panel. I think I
> should have Open Transport with an "Appletalk" control panel. Should I?
> I've read that TCP/IP is faster than Appletalk and I would need OT for
> TCP/IP would I not? What is the best version of OT that I can use on these
> 5260's? Is there a better idea?

If all you see is the 'Network' control panel, then your machines do not
support OT (I don't remember right now exactly what the 5260's are...) They
should have the older style TCP control panels if you want IP on them. If the
installer doesn't install OT then it won't run on that machine. (IIRC OT
requires a powerPC)

Appletalk over ethernet is pretty fast, waaay faster than the local talk
you're used to, and is far easier to maintain and configure. But there's
little problem running IP either, so long as the various addresses are ok. At
this poit there's not a whole lot _to_ tweak regarding TCP/IP. There are some
utilities to mess with lower-level IP settings in OT, but they're of dubious
value, imho, strictly expert-level stuff.

> Would L2 cache cards make much of a difference if I could buy them? They
> are about $100CAN ea.

They will improve the overall performance of the systems, certainly, as will
giving them as much ram as you can, particularly if the students are running
things like Photoshop and Netscape. (Netscape 4.06, which I'm using, was a
constant crash monster...until I gave it 32 megs of ram. Now it almost never
crashes.) How much really varies depending on what you're doing. I don't
remember how much my cache helped things since I upgraded RAM at the same
time, and it was only about a week after I got my 7200/75...which was such a
speedbump up from my old Mac Plus I really couldn't tell.

> Have I missed anything that would tweak the most performance out of this lab?

Not that I can see, other than buying all new Macs...;-)

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